Wednesday, November 28, 2012

At least 10 killed in today's violence

In Iraq, where the violence never ends, All Iraq News reports a Falluja sticky bombing claimed the life of 1 officer (a colonel) and the life of 1 of his bodyguards while a Baquba home invasion resulted in the death of 1 police officer and his son being left injured. Sinan Salaheddin (AP) reports a Tarmiyah home invasion (targeting a Sahwa family) resulted in the deaths of 1 Sahwa, 2 women and 4 children. Xinhua adds, "In Baghdad, two roadside bombs went off outside a liquor store near
the Nafaq al-Shurta area, in al-Jamia district in western the city,
wounding five people, an Interior Ministry source told Xinhua. In a separate incident, gunmen using silenced pistols wounded a
police officer while he was driving on al-Qanat Street in eastern
Baghdad, the source said." Meanwhile Alsumaria reports that fisherman Taha Mahmoud Sabhan is set to be executed in Kuwait and the Basra government is calling on Kuwait to toss aside the death sentence.

In what's supposed to be good news, Al Rafidayn reports that 20 women who were employees of the Centeral Bank are being released. Why isn't that good news? In what world are bank employees held for over a month to be interrogated or 'interrogated'? This is unacceptable and this is the sort of thing the US allowed when they put thug Nouri in charge in 2006 and when Barack demanded that thug Nouri stay in charge in 2010.

This is unacceptable. 20 women whose 'crime' was working for the Central Bank have been held imprisoned for over a month as Nouri's forces attempted to 'extract' information from them. About what? Probably attempting to get testimony against Sinan al-Shabibi. As the latest quarterly report from the US Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction noted at the end of last month:

On October 16, 2012, the Council of Ministers dismissed Central
Bank of Iraq (CBI) Governor Sinan al-Shabibi, amid allegations of
corruption leveled against him. This peremptory and constitutionally
questionalbe move occured as an audit of the DBI's foreign currency
auctions surfaced.
Nouri made a "constitutionally questionable move" and it's really looking like he doesn't have evidence -- not even enough circumstantial evidence to convict in the Baghdad courts he controls.

So it's a good guess that the time the women were imprisoned, they weren't doing arts and crafts.

On Iraqi prisons, we'll note this from the BRussels Tribunal:Hamid Al-Mutlaq, Deputy Prime Minister and Member of the Defense
and Security Committee alerted both Nouri Al-Maliki, Chief Commander of
the Armed Forces, and Sadoon Al-Dulaimi, Defense Minister, about the
torture in Iraqi prisons, and said that female prisoners are routinely
raped by the prison guards. Al-Mutlaq said in a press conference held in
the Parliament that there are many female prisoners who are tortured on
a regular basis, and that Al-Maliki and Al-Dulaimi bear full
responsibility. He also added that it’s unacceptable that the
perpetrating officers go unpunished for raping women, children and
torturing them. He also mentioned the names of prisoners who died as a
result of torture: Muhammad KhudairUbaid, Muhammad MoohiSharji, Ibrahim
Adnan Salih, Mahmood Ubaid Jameel, Hamid Jameel, Fadil Abdullah, Omar
Hisham, and Muhammad JasimMezhir.Al-Mutlag said the Iraqi army and security forces carry out many
raids and arbitrarily arrest citizens to blackmail them to be released
on bail. He said that the government and the Iraqi Parliament are
responsible for this situation of lawlessness.A security source revealed in August that the officers in the
detention centers in Baghdad practice all kinds of torture on the
prisoners, and many of them died as a result.MP Hamid al-Mutlaq holds Nouri al-Maliki and the Supreme Judicial
responsible for violations perpetrated against Iraqi women in prisons
and demandsthe release of these female victims and asked why such
shameful practices go unpunished.Al Mutlaq: “The security situation has deteriorated to a limit that
can not be tolerated as violation of women honor during arrests is done
by the security services.Mutlag expressed his regret for arresting women and their daughters aged of 12 years on charges of terrorism.This situation of lawlessness and rape of Iraqi female prisoners is
becoming a big problem for Maliki, as more MP’s, Civil Society
organisations and the Iraqi people are denouncing the abuses of the
Regime’s security forcesSheikh Sufian Omar al-Naimi,Emir of Naim tribes in Iraq, urged Prime
Minister Nouri al-Maliki and Iraqi parliament speaker Osama Nujaifi to
start an immediate investigation in the case of the Iraqi women
detainees who are suffering of flagrant violations in the women prison
in Baghdad.He said in a press statement issued by his office on 25 November that
“the appeals that we receive from Iraqi jailed women on charges of
multiple crimes mostly of terrorism are subjected to torture and rape”.MP Khalid Abdullah al-Alwani called the Iraqi Government to open the
women prisons for civil society organizations in order to provide the
female inmates with services and to inspect their situations.Alwanisaid “We condemn the government’s silence towards the torture
and rape crimes that are practiced inside the women prisons.”He urged the “officials to reveal the names of the perpetrators of
these shameful acts, calling at the same time to give the guilty
officers the maximum penalty”, and added that “our women’s honor is the
honor of all Iraqis.”Hundreds of citizens demonstrated on 26 November in downtown Ramadi,
the capital of Anbar province, urging the government to proceed with the
investigation of violation of human rights committed against women in
detention centers.Demonstrators waved banners calling on the government to open a
serious investigation of those violations and the formation of a
committee to examine the reality of female detainees situation in
prisons and to distinguish between those who were arrested unjustly and
terrorist elements.A team of the Iraqi NGO Hammurabi Organization published on 21
Octoberits first report about the dreadful situation in the women’s
prison in Baghdad and its 31 prisoners sentenced to death on terrorism
charges under Article 4. The report says women have been subjected to
torture by electrocution, beatings, and rape by the investigators during
interrogation. They had also been raped by the police and by the
officers escorting them during the transfer from Tasfirat Jail to the
women’s prison in Baghdad. Two membersof the Hammurabi Organization,
William Warda and Pascal Warda, former minister of environment,were
authorized to visit the prison. They said that female prisoners in death
rowsuffered from infectious diseases and scabies. “They receive no
health care and are not allowed to bathe andcan change clothes only once
a month, which aggravates their health situation”. The NGO said that the
children, imprisoned with their mothers,are “ticking time bombs that can
explode any minute”.The organization also said in its report that there are 21 children,
some of them infants, living inside the women’s prison “suffering a
punishment without committing any crime”. A total of 414 detainees are
being held in the jail, varying in age from 20 to 65. Among the inmates
were 18 women sentenced to death, and they all complainedabout neglect
and violence in various ways.Pascal Warda who led the Hammurabi Organization team said that the
conditions of prisoners, convicted as suicide bombers, live in miserabe
and intolerable conditions.The report quoted an unidentified judge as saying that there were
“violations throughout the investigation process,” recommending that
female security officers escort women prisoners to reduce the chance of
abuse.International human rights groups have on several occasions
complained of persistent torture at Iraqi prisons being used to extract
confessions from detainees, and also of the continued use of secret
jails.Journalist Serene Assir, member of the BRussells Tribunal, accurately described on 08 March 2012 in Iraqi Women: Resilience Amid Horror(http://english.al-akhbar.com/node/4957) the situation of female prisoners and women in general in today’s Iraq.Thousands of women are currently in prison under the jurisdiction of
the Ministry of Interior or the US and UK-trained military. Others,
according to veteran Iraqi activist Asma al-Haidari, languish in “secret
prisons, headed by militias loyal to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.”The use of torture and sexual abuse in prisons has become systematic
in Iraq, al-Haidari said, thanks to training not only by the US and the
UK, but also Israel and Iran.While in detention, many women suffer rape and become mothers to
children they never wanted. Some are raped in front of their husbands
and children, as a way to humiliate the family and extract “confessions”
from men suspected of resisting against a criminal regime. Some of the
women are arrested and behind bars instead of their husbands.The degradation of secularism in Iraqi society, under the weight of
Iranian-trained and backed militias, has also given rise to new social
dynamics, for which women paid the heaviest price.It is hard to imagine just how the effects of a decade of oppression
can be undone. For one, the dismantling of Iraq’s state institutions in
2003 put hundreds of thousands of women out of work. A 2007 BRussells
Tribunal dossier on women estimated that until 2003, 72 percent of
public sector workers, including teachers, were women.In spite of the damage, many Iraqi women have continued to take an
active, even heroic role. “Iraqi women have been very resilient,” said
Zangana. “Since 2003, and increasingly since February 2011, women have
been at the forefront of protests denouncing the occupation and the
regime.”Violations of women rights and torture and rape of women has been
introduced by the US Occupying Forces. In June 2010 the General
Secretary of the Union of Political Prisoners and Detainees in Iraq,
Muhammad Adham al-Hamd declared that the US occupation administration in
Iraq relied on systematic rape, torture, and sadistic treatment of
Iraqi women prisoners in its prison camps in the country. Al-Hamd said
that the enormous crimes being committed against women in the prison
camps in occupied Iraq had the support and blessings of the US military,
for whom the practices served as a means to bring psychological
pressure on men engaged in the Resistance, in an attempt to break their
spirit and fighting will.Muhammad Adham al-Hamd made the comments in a statement regarding
reports that confirmed the presence of large numbers of women in the
American-run prison camps – women who are detained solely to be raped
and abused in order to bring pressure upon their husbands, brothers,
sons or fathers.Years of US/UK occupation of Iraq have affected Iraq’s social fabric
and contributed to a serious deterioration of Iraqi women’s rights. As a
signatory to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
(ICCPR) and the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of
Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the Government of Iraq (GoI)
should urgently take the necessary measures to improve gender equality
and women’s rights.The US and UK must be held accountable for thisdeterioration, for the
destruction of Iraq’ssocial fabric and for all other crimes against
humanity they have inflicted upon the people of Iraq.

Al Mada reports political leader and cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has declared that Nouri al-Maliki's escalation of forces is an attempt to distract from where the problems stem -- the one who holds the power. He decried Nouri's recent efforts to cancel the ration card and noted the corruption allegations regarding the $4.2 billion weapons deal with Russia.

That's it for this mroning. Sorry. I'm in a hearing taking notes while I'm trying to pull this together and hoping my stomach has now settled. The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.

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